Men are like eggs. They must hatch or go bad. I came to this conclusion after seeing in the new year with a gang of university friends and hearing one of them, a single guy of 35 called Jamie, declare with complete sincerity that his resolution for 2008 was not to get a girlfriend.
I groaned. His vow struck me as odd, not just because Jamie is a remarkably warm, kind and entertaining individual rather than some ropey Lothario, but because I knew him ten years ago when he was mustard keen to marry his then girlfriend. And when I thought harder about it, I realised that over the past decade Jamie has effectively been degenerating from the man he was at 25 years old to the boy he is today.
The person who fell in love and believed that when you found a great girl you counted your blessings and married her has morphed into someone in search of nothing more than a bit of fun, who views any relationship that he can’t get out of at the ping of a text message with genuine unease.
Where have all the men gone? Instead, we have an overload of man-boys – which leaves a generation of single, thirtysomething women who are their natural mates bewildered. I am one of those women.
I am often told that our problem boils down to bad timing. In our early twenties (the age at which our parents tended to meet and marry), we, arguably the first generation of properly educated and professionally ambitious women, were not ready to settle down and start having babies.
By our late twenties many of us did end up reconnecting with our first loves, or met men of a similar age who were still young enough to want to match and hatch. But for those who didn’t, life is increasingly complicated – and infuriating.
Fred emails:
L–
When a female is between 18-24, nature puts her in her most marketable state. That is because nature expects her to breed.
When a male is between 17-24, he is most receptive to nature’s marketing. He responds to physical attraction, develops a "crush" and becomes blind to the flaws of the female. Same reason.
At 30 the gig is up. Male libido drops, he is less susceptible to crushes, and less blind to the flaws of the women he pursues.
When a female is 30, she gets hammered by her biological clock and associated biological impulses.
The author of the London Times article has it all wrong. 30 year old males do not regress into boys. They simply reach the state that nature intends.
This is all completely fair. At 18-24, women have advantages in the mating market place. By thirty, they have squandered their advantage unless they make extra efforts to preserve themselves.
